Change (Album)

Contents

Composed and produced by Dustin Beyette, production started in the early winter of 2006 of "Change" a Beyette album which features the single, "Million-Faced Man" as well as guest performers, former Metal-Blade records band "RetroGrave" guitarist and good friend, Red Beard (Mike Schermuly) performing electric guitar on "Humble" and Boston-born Vocalist/Hip-Hop producer G Dubbs singing and rapping on "Still Afraid to Ask" and "Nothing I Do " respectively. Also featured on "Still Afraid to Ask " is acoustic guitar performed by Portland resident, talented songwriter/guitarist James Lowry.

The title is not a political reference regarding the previous election, it's just ironic/coincidental that "CHANGE" was a central word in the Obama campaign. Three years in the making, "Change" is the first Beyette record that involves vocals on virtually every track as well as mostly live instrumentation. The personal themes are based on limited assessments of society, both the general worldly public as well as closer relationships. Beyette struggles to emotionally understand human nature as it seemingly destroys the happy life around him, and constantly strives for some sort of peace and resolve through his songs using an attempted voice of diligence and humility.

There are two instrumentals, the title track "Change " is a fast swinging rock track based on a more electronic version that inspired the album's name. The other, "Decide " is a fast paced evolving piano song. "Someone told me "Decide" sounded like 'peanuts from the dark side' haha I wrote it on a whim when my wife and I were visiting her grandmother, on the white upright piano at the Barron Center in Westbrook, Maine and rushed to program it into my laptop in the car."

The unique, complex and original sound of the album has been described enjoyable by fans of Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, Beck and Black Sabbath. With all the live electric and acoustic guitars, synthesizers, live electric bass, electronic beats, rock drums, piano and sound effects the record is somewhat of a genre-bender. "Change" as a studio presentation features a very small percentage of computer programming due to the presence of mostly live instrumentation. The songs go from heavily distorted rock influence, from hard ("Guided without Direction ", "The Bad Things", "Result") to soft ("Still Afraid to Ask"), tastefully from loud to calm using exotic scales ("It's Still There") and uncommon time signatures ("I Can't Be Happy").

The first and only single released to promote this album was "Million-Faced Man", released online seventeen weeks before the physical "Change" was publicly available (the physical CD of "Million-Faced Man" maxi single released just over two months preceding "Change"). The disc included 4 bonus remixes not available online for download until 2014, when the maxi single was released on beyette.bandcamp.com and Google Play all access.

While the word "change" was somewhat of a buzzword at the beginning of the 21st century, more in the later half of the first decade, the real reason the album bares the name is because of a "swinging" instrumental song Beyette wrote that sounded electronic and dramatic. "G Dubbs really dug the hook on that one, all the synthesizer solos sound almost Elfman awesome, it sounded snazzy, adventurous, spacey and epic, and extremely theatrical" The song's bare bones are performed with electric guitar, electric bass and rock-styled drums on the instrumental title track, sans synthesizer funkiness. The title on cover of the disc packaging was originally going to be in the sans-serif "Arial Black" font, but the title at the top of this very Holotype Design website inspired Beyette to take on a different "look" with a font from a popular science fiction video game. While the font changed, the visual concept that the title was bigger than the cover on a box-shaped graphic remained. The original electronic song has not been publicly released yet. "After I'm done with "Growth " the original song might be more suitable for the upcoming "Orphanage" album. But who knows, maybe the fans want it sooner."

"Change" is available on Google Play Music (direct link to album ) as well as included in subscriptions to Google Play All Access.

"Change" can be streamed on computers on Grooveshark.com (direct link )

"Change", the physical CD was available at Bullmoose locations in the Greater Portland area. The physical CD was limited edition, and a deluxe edition will likely be re-released in the future. There are no new copies available at Bullmoose, but there might be used copies from time to time. The CD is officially out of print.

Outside of Maine "Change" was once available to be shipped through Bullmoose's website. It is currently no longer available via Bullmoose's website. Because people could buy cds directly from Beyette afterhours at the 7-Eleven near the USM campus, most people seemed to avoid buying Dustin's music on Bullmoose's shelves unfortunately causing the consignment to terminate.